Coffee and Cigarettes

Directed and Written by Jim Jarmusch

Starring:  Roberto Benigni, Steve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Cate Blanchett, Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan, Bill Murray

Rated R for language

Release date: May 14, 2004

In this series of a dozen short vignettes, actors both obscure and famous discuss their lives over coffee and cigarettes.  In some cases they discuss the coffee and cigarettes, sometimes accompanied by hilarious pratfalls about coffee jitters that approach epileptic fits, and acute addiction denial that resonates like a motorcycle exhaust off a brick wall.  Other times they discuss their lives, and dreams, in most revealing fashion.  Some conversations go nowhere at all.

Like the coffee and cigarettes in the background, the participants form complimentary sides of the human spectrum.  Coffee is the stimulant, cigarettes are the relaxant.  Some are relaxed, others are hyper.  Some know the secrets and have the charisma, others seek them.  Some are the good side, others the dark side.  The checkered tablecloths and floor tiles are emphasized by the overhead shots looking down on the tableau and the black and white filming of the movie.  White for cigarettes, black for coffee.  The checkered nature of the dialogue is in the same pattern.   Which color is each side of the conversation?  Light or dark, up or down, coffee or cigarettes?

The coffee and cigarettes idea goes back some 17 years to the first installment, a six minute short featuring Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright entitled "Strange to Meet You," and made for the TV show "Saturday Night Live."  Benigni and Wright have a measured conversation similar to that of “My Dinner With Andre” with Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory (1981).  The humor is subtle and reflects the hidden humor of intellectuals, where the wise and the ridiculous are mixed together with the same vocal inflections and knowing nods.  The trick is to sort the wise from the ridiculous and take the laughs when you can.

In a more accessible form, this kind of sparse plot has something anchoring it down, something with which everybody can identify, such as the love triangle in the excellent “Sleuth” with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine (1972).  “Coffee” pushes into new territory by having no defined context for any of the conversations; so the audience has an additional dimension to cope with.  Why are the conversants here?  What is each trying to get out of the meeting and each other?  Don’t they have anything else better to do?  Do they have jobs?

The second Coffee and Cigarettes short came in 1989 and makes up the second story of this film.  It features Joie and Cinqué Lee playing good and evil twins and Steve Buscemi as an over-the-top waiter with some very deep theories about life and the dual nature of Elvis Presley.  This was several years before Buscemi’s break-out role in Tarantino’s smash “Reservoir Dogs” but the genius shines through like a streetlight through the el tracks.  He is 100% in your face right from the beginning.  A fascinating look at an acting style that made it big.  His theory about Elvis actually being two twins, one good and other evil, is personified by the twins played by Joie and Cinqué.  Even as they treat him like a complete idiot, they form a living example of his theory.  Life imitating art and denying its existence at the same time.

The most recent, and last, episode of the film’s shorts was done is 1983 and features Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, two rockers who meet in a coffee shop for a cup and a smoke, without ever seeming to know why they are there.  As they and the audience try to get to the bottom of the cause of the meeting and try to find something in common, long lost memories of cocktail parties appear in the minds of the audience.  What more can I say?  How long until I can leave?

The remaining segments feature commentary on everything from race in the performing arts to environmentalists, and back again.  Renee French plays a lone coffee drinking and cigarette smoking diner who doesn’t want anything from waiter Mike Hogan except to be left alone with her gun catalogue.  But he won’t give up, and like Charlie Brown kicking Lucy’s football he keeps coming back for rejection after rejection; the waiter playing the suitor who doesn’t have either a clue or a chance compared to glossy photos.

Cate Blanchett does a great job playing both parts of her dialog over coffee and cigarettes.  The special effects work is great and Blanchett’s timing is right on.

Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan have a great see-saw battle of insider connections which has them alternating as either groveling status-seekers or snobbish insiders.  Each more anxious than the other to be either on the giving or taking side of Hollywood faux status.  An anxious waiter waits hand and foot on a beautiful customer who wants nothing from him.  But he comes back again and again to her rejection.  Remind you of anything?

A play on reality TV and fame at the same time, “Coffee and Cigarettes” shows that even famous people are lost for words at times and sometimes get caught up in their own trickery to boot.  A little on the slow side, this movie takes patience and concentration.  Don’t see it taking anything for granted, it’s a jungle out there.  A have a good, stiff cup of coffee before the show.